Ceasing to change our views, hopes, dreams and aspirations will definitely close the door to progress. Opening our senses to the challenge of continuity is essential to develop the ability to improve ourselves. When we lost the will to embrace new experiences, we have built a giant wall around our own personal ambitions, emotionally and intellectually. I have been formed around a broad background in finance, which is enough to propel me to a successful career platform. But I still can see another window from my own potential; and the study and practice of medicine appeal to me as some potential offering greater challenges and rewards, far beyond my current experiences. Ahead of me is a frontier of opportunity that is completely different from the path I have trod, and the fingerprints I have left shows that what I have chosen was never been thought to be possible.
I have always been thinking of doing something else other than my parent’s job, since they are both doctors. In a fit of adolescent rebellion, I was swearing before that I would take a completely different path, and I tried devising ways to excel in other fields entirely different from my parents. I have been proud of them and what they have accomplished, but the eagerness to shape a world for myself prevailed over me for a time. We left Thailand, my birthplace, when I was three years old – a decision my parents chose to widen the chances of earning more to provide for my siblings and I. But they would still send me to Phuket every summer, and as a youth, that served as a constant reminder to value my roots. It made me appreciate the advantage of not being too comfortable living in a single routine.
I have been engaged as an intern to a number of medical practices during my high school. But my academic interest did not bloom until I entered college, where I chose to major in business and economics. I took my studies with the usual great intensity that I commit in every endeavor I faced, and that allowed me to finish my degree in less than the typical four years. Of course, my life has been active and well-rounded as I got involved in academic clubs, yet a string of scholastic honors landed on me. I am good at numbers and financial analysis, and I have entertained the idea of spending the future in a business.
After graduation, I immediately took a job as an equities trade in a middle-sized firm engaged in financial services. I stayed their for five years, and later took a post as a financial consulting associate and eventually got promoted as a senior sales and marketing associate in the New York office of the company. Recently, I worked with Merrill Lynch where I was promoted as vice-president of the investment banking division. Given my experiences, I know I’ve got a promising future in the financial industry. But for each day that I wake up, I’ve always felt the craving for something more profound that my present personal life.
I am no stranger to the lows and highs of the medical profession, and this I learned and experienced being someone flanked by my parent doctors and a brother who is also in a medical school. It is not all altruistic glory or scientific innovation that made me shift focus to medicine, but I could say it is a gentle blend of both. Unlike in finance, medical practice allows its practitioners to touch and change permanently the landscape of people’s lives. I saw this as a foreboding challenge more as an opportunity than as an obstacle.
My genuine affection to fulfill a community obligation drove me change my career focus to take such a daring career shift. I have volunteered at soup kitchens, nursing homes and hospitals from high school to college. I also did tutoring for inner city children, and as a professional, I got involved in building homes for underprivileged communities. No doubt, shifting a career to a rigorous one such as medicine has grave consequences and challenges. But I know the rewards will be commensurate to all the time I invested and the endeavors I sacrificed. From now on, I will look forward to face more dramatic and irreversible changes that come my way.
Photo Credit : Rene Ehrhardt
